INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, 8 March is a tribute to our history and a celebration of our future.
15,000 women garment workers marched through the streets.
worked in dirty.
ten or twelve hours a day. There were no toilets or teabreaks and talking was forbidden. Many became blind by the age of 25 from sewing tiny beads on to the finery of the wealthy. They marched for equal pay.
mothers Two Zetkin, revolutionary leader of the German women's movement called on all socialists to celebrate that day as International Women's Day.
last 74 years? In the current economic situa tion and with the warmongering policies of Thatcher and Reagan, women are suffering disproportionately.
and women's pay is as wide as ever - 25 per cent on average (except in Sweden and surprisingly Italy). In Britain women's pay is 60 per cent of men's passing of the Equal Pay Act.
for women as it is for men, government is considering the introduction of measures to stop married women signing on altogether.
reserve army of labour, prepared to take poor conditions and low pay when they're at work and flexible enough to be thrown out of work when there's unemployment.
happened and many women have struggled since the heroic example of our sisters in 1908. Women are stronger and they expect more from labour movement has taken up the fight for retreat from prosecuting doctors abortions. Women at Lee Jeans, Hoovers and the carried on the fine fighting back. They will no longer accept that a woman's place should be in the home - but should be at work and in her union.
the role of women as a reserve army of labour begins to threaten the Tories' whole policy on unemployment.
trade unions have to support positive action in favour of women at all levels of employment: recruitment, training and promotion.
Building a massive event on 5 June, the day the Labour Party is organising a women's right to work festival, is in the interests of the whole labour movement. As in 1908, so today, women are often the standard bearers for the working class fightback.
Throughout history women have organis.
eo to Tight Tor Ineir Women's Day is a symbol of that fight. It is a beacon burning for our future.
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Socialist Challenge 4 March 1882 On that day in 1908, in New York, These women suffocating factories for working and the right to organise in VECTS SCIET Clara How much has changed for women in the The gap between men's La net decrease since the Unemployment is increasing twice as fast and the Tory Capitalism needs women as a But will the Tories' plan succeed? A lot has Moreover. increasingly the Only last week the Tories were forced to giving THE MARXIST PAPER FOR LABOUR & YBUTH
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